Akito shouldn’t have done it.
Never before had a thought so painfully consumed his mind. A regret so deep it caused his body to physically ache, a gnawing hole in his chest that grew larger by the second.
One pound of rice. That was all he took.
His plan should’ve been foolproof. While the granaries used to store rice and other grain were under a constant impenetrable guard, the wagons that delivered those goods were far less protected. He had spent months meticulously planning everything out, learning the timing of the routes down to the precise second, and mentally rehearsing the heist dozens of times until it became carved into his brain.
And it worked. He managed to successfully smuggle the goods back to his tiny mud home. Not a single guard or worker noticed.
He never expected his own neighbor to turn him in.
And now, he and his entire family were to be put to death for it. The Emperor did not tolerate those who threatened the precarious agricultural balance of the nation. Food theft was a country-wide capital offense.
Akito had known the consequences, of course. Everyone in the city did. But he was tired of hearing his two children cry themselves to sleep every night from hunger. Was tired of mixing clay with flour to create something that only vaguely resembled food. Was tired of being terrified that he would be awoken in the middle of the night by the sharp cry indicating a fatal block of the intestines.
He didn’t want to watch his children die like that. He had already lost his wife and too many of his friends. No more.
So he did what he had to do.
And it should’ve worked, damn it all, it should’ve fucking worked!
He hated his neighbor. What had the reward been for turning him in? A bag of rice? Two?
How much was Akito and his children’s lives worth?
Akito was only idly aware of the rope being fastened around his neck. The twine was coated with dried bloodstained, he noted with some morbid amusement. Oroppo didn’t even have the resources for rope; they had to reuse old ones.
“Dad,” one of his children, Ichika, whispered from next to him. He was already twelve, but looked like he was only seven. The result of a lifetime of starvation and malnutrition. “I’m scared.”
“What’s going on?” his other child, Kana, asked. She was only four, too young to really comprehend what was happening.
Akito let out a long breath. Swallowed the fear and anxiety and regret. And he smiled.
“It will be okay. Dad’s here.”
All around them, the other prisoners, men, women, children, begged the executioner to let them live. No such luck. The executioner had been working this job for years. He had lost the capacity to feel, or care, long ago. Akito could see it in his dead fish eyes, flat and uninterested as if he couldn’t wait to just get the job over with so he could clock out and go home.
The pleas morphed into screams. The executioner didn’t seem to hear any of it. He lazily raised his hand to give the signal to open the trapdoors beneath their feet.
“It will be okay,” Akito repeated. “I… I love you two–”
He saw it on the executioner’s face first. The executioner’s eyes went wide, his body tensing up as a fearful pallor spread across his visage. Akito blinked, confused and more than a little frightened. What could’ve made the executioner react this way–
There were two people standing next to the executioner. They hadn’t been there a moment before. Just somehow materialized out of thin air.
Akito’s eyes went wide. That uniform… The dark masks paired with the dark cloaks…
Huntsmen.
The crowd around them immediately fell silent. Even his fellow prisoners stopped screaming. Several of them didn’t even dare to breathe.
Akito’s mind raced in panic. What were the Huntsmen doing here? He didn’t recall the last time he saw one inside the city. Or in general. The elite operatives of the Emperor himself, the Huntsmen were widely regarded as ghosts or bogeymen. Parents would use them to scare their children into not wandering out into the streets after dark. Hell, he himself had done that before.
The Huntsmen had a quick exchange with the executioner. Whatever they said, the executioner paled before gesturing frantically at the prisoners and stuttering, “T-Take them, take them!”
Before Akito knew what was happening, he and all the other prisoners were released. The guards didn’t even rebind their hands; with the Huntsmen there, they knew that not a single prisoner would be stupid enough to try to fight or escape.
“What are you doing with them?” one of the guards felt brave enough to ask.
The two Huntsmen turned to him in unison. The effect was downright creepy, and Akito had to suppress a shiver.
“We require live test subjects for our experiments,” one of the Huntsman said. He tilted his head. “Are you volunteering for the cause?”
The guard paled and hurriedly shook his head.
Experiments?
Oh no. Oh no, no, no.
Akito felt as though he’d been drenched with freezing water. Around him, the other prisoners drew in sharp breaths. A couple of them vomited from fear.
The Huntsmen marched them out of the city in a single-file line. Akito held his head high, even as the people on the streets pointed and stared. At the city gates, two women joined their group. They seemed to be part of the Huntsmen’s group. Healers, perhaps? Alchemists? He hoped they weren’t magical researchers…
He had heard horror stories about the Huntsmen’s experimentations before. Live vivisections, poison testing, efforts to quantify how much damage a certain Constitution level could handle… It was said to easily be a fate worse than death. Hanging was downright a mercy in comparison to what went on in those experiments.
And now, it was going to happen to them. Akito wanted to scream. They couldn’t even have the grace of a relatively quick death. Now they were going to be tortured and experimented upon until their bodies expired.
They left the gates and marched in silence for about half an hour. None of them tried to escape. They knew they’d be cut down without fail. The opening to fight had passed long ago. Akito regretted not taking it. His mind kept on conjuring worse and worse situations.
Then, they stopped in a clearing. One of the Huntsmen turned around. It was the same one who’d spoken earlier.
“Alright, that should be far enough.”
Akito and the other prisoners tensed up. He looked around, taking in their surroundings. They were surrounded by dense foliage on all sides. He knew that this particular section of the forest was extremely remote; hunters rarely went here due to the risk of monster attacks. Nobody would hear them scream.
Terror flooded Akito’s mind. He wasn’t a very religious man, but at that moment, he whispered a silent prayer to the Goddess–
The Huntsman’s appearance shifted. His mask disappeared, his eye color changed, and his hair lengthened, until a completely different person stood there. A young man with messy black hair and mischievous grey eyes.
“So. How do you all feel about Luminarche?”
Akito and the others all stared at him.
Wait.
What?
The Huntsman paused. “Oh. I’m not a Huntsman, by the way.” He smiled. “My name is Levi Ironwood, and I’m an adventurer from Luminarche. I’m here to help.”
There was a long moment of silence as they struggled to process his words. Was this some sort of test? A psychological ploy designed to crush their spirits even more?
“You can trust him,” the woman next to him said — except her appearance had also changed. Vibrant blonde hair, bright green eyes, the symbol of the Church embroidered on her dress…
A priestess of the Goddess.
Even the Huntsmen didn’t impersonate Church priestesses, if only because it went against their imperial theology.
That meant…
This was real.
And finally, Akito sobbed.
The next few minutes passed by in a blur. Ironwood asked them all to link hands. Then, he teleported them to the Curtain. Somehow, Ironwood created a hole in the barrier, and they manually stepped through. Once they were all on the other side, Ironwood turned to them.
“Do me a favor, and don’t tell anyone it was me. Just say you escaped on your own.”
They all nodded. Not a single one of them was going to betray the one who saved them anytime soon.
“Okay. I’m going to teleport you all to the border wall, and then I’ll have to leave immediately. I can’t be seen. The Luminarchan soldiers will take care of you.”
“How can we ever thank you?” one of the men asked. His voice trembled, and he looked like he still couldn’t believe what was happening.
Ironwood tilted his head.
“Thank me for what?”
The man didn’t have a response for that. He merely stared for a second before bowing his head.
They got into position once more, joining hands. This time, Akito found himself standing right next to Ironwood. The air around him felt livelier, as though his sheer presence inspired vitality. Or maybe that was just Akito’s imagination.
Before he could stop himself, Akito spoke up quietly. “Lord Ironwood?”
“Just call me Levi,” Ironwood said. “What is it?”
“My children and I were only caught and sentenced to death because my neighbor turned me in to the authorities.” Akito coughed and wet his lips nervously. “I realize it’s a lot to ask, but can you…”
Levi turned to stare at him, almost incredulously, as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. Then, he snorted. “What’s his name and what does he look like?”
Akito told him, and Levi nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”
Then the world around them spun, and then they were outside the border gates. The Luminarchan soldiers immediately saw them. At first, they seemed worried that it was an enemy attack, but when they realized they were all unarmed civilians, they quickly opened the gates and sent out soldiers and medics.
True to his word, Ironwood was nowhere to be seen.
Even so, Akito smiled.
Thank you.
After making sure that the prisoners were safely collected by the Luminarchan soldiers, Levi then took a quick trip back to Oroppo while cloaked in stealth. He still couldn’t believe that the man had the guts to outsource his revenge to him, but hey, Levi respected the attempt. Enough such that he tracked down the neighbor and took some measures to ensure his quality of life would be, ah, dramatically reduced.
After that, he teleported back to the clearing.
“Everything work out alright?” Anastasia asked.
Levi nodded. “They’re safe.”
He’d initially thought about interfering with the execution in a more public way, but he decided against it. It would only be a short-term solution; even if he caused some sort of mini-revolution, the Yukihasan imperial government would just dispatch soldiers to retake control of the city, thus rendering his efforts moot. Unless he stayed in the city to protect it, but that wasn’t an option.
For a more permanent solution, the only feasible method Levi could think of was to simply overthrow the government altogether. Unfortunately, that wasn’t as simple as it sounded. It wasn’t just a matter of killing the Emperor and whoever else was in charge (which in itself would already be a tremendously difficult feat); there was also the logistics of installing a stable replacement regime, handling the domestic and international political fallouts, the paperwork, Goddess there’d be so much damn paperwork…
Levi didn’t want to deal with all of that.
Thankfully, if he played his cards right, he didn’t have to.
The Resistance did exist, after all…
He just had to reach them first.
And so, they continued their journey east. With a combination of flight, teleportation, and very fast sprinting, they were able to avoid detection and maximize their speed.
Yukihasa’s mainland wasn’t very large. The vast majority of the country’s landmass was composed of the numerous islands out in the sea. As such, by the end of the day, they already reached a small town on the coast. They intentionally avoided the larger coastal cities; unlike the farming city, which was way out in the middle of nowhere, the coastal cities would have enough of a military presence to know that the Huntsman wasn’t where he was supposed to be. There might even be a few Huntsmen inside the cities, which would doubly complicate things.
Levi didn’t know how much longer it’d be before Yukihasa discovered that the three Huntsmen in charge of enforcing the Luminarche-Yukihasa border had been neutralized. According to the Huntsman with them, they were supposed to report back weekly. Their next report was due in two days, so Levi supposed that was how much time they had left before the alarms would be raised.
The Huntsman requisitioned a small rowing boat from a fisherman. It was made of wood and didn’t seem like it would survive larger storms, but it worked. The journey to the nearest island would take roughly two hours. They didn’t waste any time, and before long they were out on the sea, the setting sun casting a warm orange glow over them. The Huntsman had volunteered to row the boat, and he pushed the oars back and forth in a swift but steady rhythm as they sat around him.
“At our current pace, we should reach the eastern islands in a few days, provided we don’t run into any delays,” the Huntsman said. “I suggest we avoid the major islands and stick to minor islands and outposts.”
Levi nodded. “That should work.” He paused, glancing down at the rowboat. “Why didn’t you select a faster ship?”
“The waters are patrolled by both soldiers and Huntsmen,” the Huntsman answered. “Most of the faster ships use certain enchantments that make them easily detected. Wind propulsion technology, for example. A rowboat is slower, but stealthier by far.”
Levi raised his eyebrows. “Huh. I wasn’t aware it was possible to detect that.” There went his plan to blast wind behind them to propel their boat forward.
“Will the war interfere with our travels much? I assume the closer we get to the frontlines, the more dangerous it’ll be,” Anastasia said.
“It depends,” the Huntsman said. “Normally, I would say yes, but the three of you are powerful enough that I doubt it. So long as nobody important detects your presence, then things should be” – in unison, Levi, Selene, and Anastasia all widened their eyes in horror – “fine.” He paused. “Wait.” He struggled to raise the oars. “The water is… heavier?”
Levi, Selene, and Anastasia instantly exploded into motion, leaping to their feet on the rowboat. Less because of the water’s apparent weight, and more because of the Huntsman jinxing them without a thought. Fucking Lawliet’s Conjecture. They peered out into the misty darkness, straining to detect any enemies.
For several moments, nothing happened.
Then, the boat underneath them shuddered, and Levi narrowed his eyes as he detected an immense buildup of mana in front of them.
The sea came alive with a furious roar, the sound of thousands of tons of water being displaced all at once. From the mist burst a colossal water dragon a hundred meters tall, snarling and hissing wildly as it lunged at them with blistering speeds. An artificial construct formed from pure water and mana that aimed to tear them apart and crush them alive.
Levi merely raised a single hand in front of him.
Incinerate.
A literal mountain of flames hotter than the sun exploded from his hand and met the water dragon head-on. A horrendous screech sounded out as fire and water clashed, the flames instantly vaporizing the water at the point of contact and releasing clouds of steam. Levi continued pouring mana into his attack, refusing to let up a single inch–
His instincts screamed.
Levi cut off the flames and threw himself to the side, only narrowly avoiding the spear that would’ve pierced his heart. A moment later, a massive boom echoed out from the sound barrier being broken.
Anastasia, Selene, and the Huntsman all whirled around in shock to face the man who’d suddenly appeared behind them. None of them had sensed his presence.
“Heh,” the new foe said, grinning from where he stood balanced atop the sea’s surface. He had dark green hair the color of sea moss with eyes that gleamed a dark burgundy red. “You managed to dodge that? Man, you’re good.”
Levi lashed outward with his hand, firing off several Sever and Cleaves, but the new foe dodged them all, leaping into the air to join his comrades.
There were three of them in total. Two men and one woman. They hovered in the air above them, mana rolling off them in waves. Levi could tell that they were incredibly strong. Mythmakers, no doubt.
Wait, no.
This sheer level of presence…
“Oh, Goddess,” Anastasia breathed, for once sounding well and truly worried. “What are they doing here?”
“You know them?” Levi asked, not taking his eyes off them.
“Yukihasa’s Three Pillars,” Anastasia said. “Widely considered to be amongst the strongest adventurers in the entire world. And Levi…” She swallowed. “They’re Ascendant-tier adventurers. All three of them.”